Certain it is that we often get some of the best touches of nature from children.  Childhood is a world by itself, and we listen to children when they frankly speak out of it with a strange interest.  There is such a freedom from responsibility and from worldly wisdom,—­it is heavenly wisdom.  There is no sentiment in children, because there is no ruin; nothing has gone to decay about them yet,—­not a leaf or a twig.  Until he is well into his teens, and sometimes later, a boy is like a bean-pod before the fruit has developed,—­indefinite, succulent, rich in possibilities which are only vaguely outlined.  He is a pericarp merely.  How rudimental are all his ideas!  I knew a boy who began his school composition on swallows by saying there were two kinds of swallows,—­chimney swallows and swallows.

Girls come to themselves sooner; are indeed, from the first, more definite and “translatable.”

XVII

Who will write the natural history of the boy?  One of the first points to be taken account of is his clannishness.  The boys of one neighborhood are always pitted against those of an adjoining neighborhood, or of one end of the town against those of the other end.  A bridge, a river, a railroad track, are always boundaries of hostile or semi-hostile tribes.  The boys that go up the road from the country school hoot derisively at those that go down the road, and not infrequently add the insult of stones; and the down-roaders return the hooting and the missiles with interest.

Often there is open war, and the boys meet and have regular battles.  A few years since, the boys of two rival towns on opposite sides of the Ohio River became so belligerent that the authorities had to interfere.  Whenever an Ohio boy was caught on the West Virginia side of the river, he was unmercifully beaten; and when a West Virginia boy was discovered on the Ohio side, he was pounced upon in the same manner.  One day a vast number of boys, about one hundred and fifty on a side, met by appointment upon the ice and engaged in a pitched battle.  Every conceivable missile was used, including pistols.  The battle, says the local paper, raged with fury for about two hours.  One boy received a wound behind the ear, from the effects of which he died the next morning.  More recently the boys of a large manufacturing town of New Jersey were divided into two hostile clans that came into frequent collision.  One Saturday both sides mustered their forces, and a regular fight ensued, one boy here also losing his life from the encounter.

Every village and settlement is at times the scene of these youthful collisions When a new boy appears in the village, or at the country school, how the other boys crowd around him and take his measure, or pick at him and insult him to try his mettle!